Ancestors

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 14:46

My frustration runs sometimes in an anti-parallel direction to the boost that is driving me to write this (will reference in a reply).

The various newer-than-free-software "Open" movements tend to work on sharing useful artefacts that have come out the end of some production process. The process often seems secondary, at best.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:07

I have modulated down a lot of my antipathy towards non-commercial (NC) and no-derivatives (ND) terms for work released under Creative Commons licenses yet still intermingled amongst Open Access or Open Education Resources.

It's not (or at least, not only) Google that's driving the focus on camera-ready copy, content to leave the editor's and proofreader's markup behind.

References, bibliographies, methods sections are long-established windows into the production process, but at a much more abstract, conceptual level.

We still struggle deeply with who gets to inspect, let alone manipulate, the markup rather than receive the rendered version.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:17

I've sat on this long enough that I don't think it qualifies as a subtoot any more.

One sometimes sees an admonition against posting screenshots of text with the exhortation to just ("just") copy-and-paste the text also or instead.

I've seen this in two circumstances. Frequently it's part of trying to maintain our culture of supplying image descriptions. But I've also seen it in the context of communicating error messages for bug reports.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Toot

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:22

I understand the impulse to ask for that, but in each case there are two fundamental problems.

The less complicated one to describe and discuss is the fact that so many interfaces now do not support selecting all the visible text that a screenshot can quickly and easily capture.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Descendants

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:25

The more nuanced problem is identical to the larger point here: The markup works on and around the text, conveying information beyond what a string or array of glyphs does not.

Spaces vs tabs is just an appetizer here.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:33

Similar considerations apply around the use of PDFs and complaints against that.

Do I want all the "source" that went into making any given PDF? Sure I do.

Does "just post it as HTML" get me that?

Maybe it gets me more, but it can also lose things, too.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:56

Part of my reconciliation with NC and ND terms has been letting the less American-exceptionalist notion of a creator's moral rights to sink in a bit.

I support an approach that respects any creator's decision to cut things off, to say "This is it. This is a thing I have made, and what you see is what you get, whether it's a question of going back into process or provenance, or going forward into interpretation or adaptation".

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat

Written by like jam or bootlaces on 2025-01-20 at 15:57

Sometimes those are not easy or clean cuts to make. But I think they can adhere to a work as much as any other markup, separable only through these familiar but fraught fair-use questions of derivation or transformation.

Even then, we can still have works with explicitly-marked, broader interfaces. That provide "source". That allow derivatives and support a gentler slope towards inspection, adaptation, and possibly even transformation.

=> More informations about this toot | More toots from idlestate@toot.cat